


when it is said (some say)

by jubilantly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Feelings Realization, First War with Voldemort, Friends to Lovers, M/M, background James/Lily, miscellaneous Order-related background noise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-11-26 06:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20925749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubilantly/pseuds/jubilantly
Summary: The war is just starting to catch up with them, adulthood is making its uncomfortable presence known, and Sirius considers, at length, his feelings about one Remus Lupin.





	when it is said (some say)

**Author's Note:**

> Team Embarkment
> 
> Prompt:  
“Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.” ~ Henri Frederic Amiel
> 
> \--
> 
> Title is from [this Emily Dickinson poem](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_word_is_dead).
> 
> For reasons of anonymity I'm guessing I can't put anyone else's name in here either, but _thank you_ to two people who know who they are - really, thank you so much for your help, betaing/britpicking/etc as well as listening to my incessant wordy worrying.
> 
> \--

There are two things, Sirius Black supposes, that he knows with certainty, these days.

The first of them is that his entire world, the metaphorical statistical pie-slice of England, the scattered hidden space that he and his inhabit, has been very nearly at war for an age, since before Sirius himself ever learned what it was to have something worth fighting for.

The second is, following from how that war is becoming outright, how the situation is becoming worse every day, following from how he is in the middle of it now, is that he could die any day now, and he would, he would, for his friends.

He’s being dramatic, he knows. Unfortunately he doesn’t have anything better to do at the moment. But also, it’s true, as true as anything can be.

He doesn’t really think he will die, and he doesn’t think his friends will die, it’s laughable almost, but he knows that if it came down to it he would die for his friends, knows it deep in his bones.

There’s a number three and four and so on, on the hypothetical list of certainties, but they all fall under or lead up to number two, a bucketful of certainties related to his friends, and he is sure about them and feels at home in them in a way that makes him not even count them, background facts of the universe, the laws of nature and magic and everything else — to love James Potter and be loved in return is not something that is debatable enough to have to be known with certainty.

Conversely, there are technically a lot more than two things that Sirius doesn’t know, or so he’s told, but most of them he doesn’t care about; there’s only a handful of them that bother him, that he is bothered about not knowing enough about, that he is unsure about, that make him feel wrong-footed and, impossibly, a little stupid.

One of them is Remus Lupin.

Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s not in a bad way, it just is, and is, and is. He knows enough about Remus to know him better than anyone else; knows, too, enough to know that he will never know all of it, never know enough to feel like he has closed every distance that remains there.

More importantly maybe in the uncertainties, there is the war, and everything attached to it, and growing up and all of the things attached to that, but those are things that it makes sense to be unknowledgeable about, those are things nobody is supposed to know the answer to, and there’s enough people already preoccupied with these uncertainties that Sirius doesn’t feel the need to add his own time and thoughts to the pot.

Sirius has never seen anyone else react with the appropriate amount of confusion and fascination to Remus. He doesn’t understand at all how the rest of the world can shrug and be done with Remus, how the rest of the world doesn’t lie awake wondering about why he is like that and sometimes just wondering and sometimes just lying awake because Remus exists, and that seems unfair, because something unbalanced the universe by putting someone in it who is somehow more than other people, and it isn’t right that nobody else notices it.

It unsettles him, to be the only one who is turning like one of a pair of magnets towards Remus.

It offends him, that without his permission, something about him has to go to Remus Remus Remus even when it’s inconvenient, even when he could be doing something more fun or more likely to be fun, even when Remus is turning away, being grouchy, being impossible.

As he is now.

And Sirius understands, it’s late they’ve had a mission they have blisters on their feet and soot on their faces and not a single bit of good news to deliver, but actually, he doesn’t understand. He wants nothing more in this moment than to have Remus with him a little longer.

He wants Remus to come with him to his flat and as always wash his hands at the kitchen sink as if there’s not a perfectly serviceable bathroom sink just on the other side of the flat, he wants Remus to be there, he wants to not be alone, and he doesn’t want to go to Remus’ flat, because it’s a weird-feeling place to be, a squished shoebox in between other shoeboxes, small window looking out at the too-close dark wall of the next building over, and worst of all there isn’t a sofa and he feels out of place in the most irritating way when he sits on Remus’ bed.

So Remus is supposed to come with Sirius, to Sirius’ flat, where there are takeout leftovers and a sofa and, well, Sirius.

Remus isn’t convinced by this line of reasoning.

“It’s late,” he says, impatiently patient, closed-off in a way he never used to be, “and I have to do another thing for Dumbledore tomorrow, and I don’t want to go home from yours at arse o'clock at night when I could just go home now and sleep. I don’t—”

“Stay the night, then.”

Remus blinks, goes a little pink in the face, shakes his head.

“Sirius…”

“No, really, I’ll transfigure the sofa for you.”

Remus is shaking his head still, though slower, looking at Sirius as if he isn’t making sense at all, or being unreasonable, a look that Sirius is familiar with and has always quite happily ignored.

Sirius waits.

“Oh, fine, alright,” says Remus, deflating, relieved, half-smiling, after only a moment.

And that’s that.

They walk on, still tired, and Sirius knows they’ll probably not manage to stay awake much longer than it’ll take to eat the leftovers and transfigure the sofa and collapse into their respective beds, and that’s not quite enough, but he doesn’t know what’s missing either, and at least Remus will be there.

-

“Merlin fuck, time is it?”, is the first thing Sirius says to Remus the next morning, mumbles it really, into the doorframe he has stumbled against, eyes closing again already.

“Sorry,” Remus says. He’s standing at the door of the flat, bent halfway down where he was, it seems, trying to put on his shoes, when Sirius interrupted him. He sounds tired. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Sirius waves a hand, tired too but, doesn’t-matter-don’t-worry-about-it, and squints into the folded half-dawn of the windowless tiny hallway, lit only by the dregs of what grey light drizzles in from his open bedroom door; yawns, belying his own point.

“How long will you be gone for? With the thing Dumbledore…”

He trails off and yawns again, and there is no answer. Remus just puts on his shoes, sighs.

Sirius waits and tries not to fall asleep standing up.

“I don’t know,” says Remus, finally.

He leaves without either of them saying anything else, and closes the door quietly.

Sirius stands, swaying tiredly, in the doorway to his room.

He misses his friend. He misses his friends.

The first seven years of their friendship required very few goodbyes; they’re not practiced at them, or at wrestling with the uncertainty of when or how they’ll meet next, not Sirius and Remus, not Sirius and James, certainly not Peter and anyone, they’re floundering and it shows in a million ways.

Sirius doesn’t know how to stay as they are, and he suspects the others don’t either, know how to stay something they already aren’t anymore, or become something just as good as what they are, were, and they don’t know anything else either.

Unknowns all the way down, in the war.

They used to tell each other, all of them, about their Order business, where they were going and where they had gone, until they were not yelled at but white-facedly reprimanded, had to see the clenched fingers and the fear of something they couldn’t fathom before they were quite ready to see adults afraid and uncertain. And Sirius would’ve ignored it, and he thinks Remus would’ve too, only James told them to listen, that there were rules worth following, with that look on his face, and Sirius listened.

Which means, which _means_, that now all they have is asking about when someone will back, how many hours or days of restless waiting there will be, that’s all they have to hold on to, which is little enough but it’s still something; and this time Sirius doesn’t have even that.

Uncertainties all the way down, in the war, in the world outside Hogwarts. Nothing’s certain, which is usually, which used to be, how Sirius likes things to be, but not in this, never in this. Never when it’s about his friends. But he doesn’t really have a choice.

He’s still leaning against the doorframe, but he’s too awake to be sleepy rather than tired.

Going back to sleep is unthinkable, then, no matter how much his heavy head and heavy limbs want to, so he doesn’t even try, shoves off the doorframe and steps out of his bedroom completely to start the morning.

In his badly-lit and hardly-used kitchen, the kitchen side of the living room, on the counter across the room from the sofa which is still a bed, he finds a mug, nearly empty, nearly cold, that Remus must have taken out of the cupboard (or off the counter and rinsed it out), that Remus must have made terrible too-strong black tea in but never finished drinking the tea out of, and Sirius putters about for a while, uselessly, without touching that mug, which is standing solid on the counter, proof that someone else was here.

That Sirius was not alone, that Sirius is still close enough to his friends that one of them would make himself at home in his flat just like that, still welcome and still knowing it.

Sirius makes himself tea, too, though less strong, lets it steep while he stands leaning against the counter next to Remus’ tea.

He never knew it was possible to have friends like these, to love someone like he does, to love people like being more than his own body, to be part of something bigger than himself in a way that feels like dissolving gloriously and not like being stifled and cut away at.

He also never knew, never thought, while they were at Hogwarts and everything was easy and infinite and close, that that kind of being-part-of could start to go away again, could unravel into being too busy, or just too distracted too stupid too oh-I’ll-deal-with-that-later, too grown-up to see each other much.

Of course, they _are_ grown-ups now — if they weren’t (they aren’t), war would be making them so — and grown-ups go each to their own flat at the end of a day in which they have worked different jobs, and grown-ups don’t get to be friends like that anymore, especially while fighting a war.

No more late-night nonsense, no more loud whispers through curtains (oh to be separated by nothing more than twice a curtain, oh to have a true chosen family still, oh to not be at fucking war), no more communal breakfast and classroom distractions and. It’s not these specifics that Sirius misses, he knows, he knows; it’s the closeness, as a pervasive and natural thing, not asked for, not worked for, just fact, just life.

He doesn’t want to have to work so hard for this shadow of the old friendship, he doesn’t _want_ to, he hasn’t seen James outside of Order meetings in days or possibly a whole week and just the fact of not knowing the exact amount of time is uncomfortable, he hasn’t seen Lily either, nor Peter, and he hadn’t seen Remus for a while before the previous day’s mission and now he won’t see him again for only fate knows how long.

Unpleasant is too weak and too strong a word to describe how Sirius feels about floating strangely away from them, his favourite people; worried is a word he refuses to use but thinks maybe, unthinkably, he is starting to be, in this reality in which his choices, he is starting to suspect, matter, and matter more than anyone’s choices should ever have to matter.

That’s war, he thinks, sardonically, and pours that pitiful cold remainder of Remus’ tea down the drain, where he’s sure it will join the rest of the small joys left unfinished in service of the war.

-

He does talk to James most days on their two-way mirrors, thank Merlin, though for only minutes at a time, interludes of their days, conversation still as easy as it always was but interrupted now by more than just teachers, and that’s uncomfortable, that part — to have only the mirrors when before the mirrors were a last resort, to have the mirrors be the most frequent point of connection when they used to be for bridging the distance during seemingly-impossible stretches of several hours apart. Hours, merely, only hours spent physically apart from each other.

But it’s fine, it’s fine. They have the mirrors, and they can communicate a lot with very few words, and Sirius gets to see Lily too when she leans over James’ shoulder and waves at Sirius and laughs at him and James both.

Their friendship is still what it was, and it will always be. It’s just that stupid circumstances are making Sirius’ life something that it shouldn’t be, it’s just that he wishes he didn’t have to do these grown-up things when neither of them is grown up at all, but he does have James still, and James still has him.

And James has Lily, and he has other things to do today than Order meetings, and Sirius hasn’t heard from Remus again yet even though it’s been days, and Sirius does have to go to that meeting even though the weather is terrible and his mood even more so.

He’s early for once, despite everything or because of everything, partly because he hopes Remus will be there and he’ll get to talk to him before the meeting.

The only ones who are there yet when he comes in and shakes the water out of his hair are Arabella Figg, puttering about, and Peter, fidgeting. On a chair there’s a jacket that Sirius thinks belongs to Marlene.

Sirius pushes away the disappointment and throws himself into a chair next to Peter, habit, comfortable, throws himself into the chair and rubs a hand over his face and tries to make himself less tired and less lost.

It doesn’t work.

He grins at Peter instead.

Peter, too, seems a little lost, and Sirius realizes with startling clarity and idiotic slowness that of course, of all of them, he should have expected Peter to also be adrift, to also miss their Hogwarts days probably.

James has a life stretching out in front of him, a future, things he wants to do, a girl he wants to make googly eyes at forever; Sirius dares not presume about Remus; Peter, surely, was never this fearful nor directionless at Hogwarts, not _this_ much, and Sirius feels a sudden kinship with him that he has rarely felt, even while they have always been unquestionably friends.

“Good to see you,” he says, and means it.

Peter smiles back, stops fidgeting so much, and they manage to fall into easy conversation, and more people arrive and Sirius looks up every time and then back to Peter again, disappointedly, when the new arrival isn’t Remus, and someone makes tea for everyone, and Sirius lets his tea go too cold.

The meeting is half-heartedly called to order, but it’s clear that they’re waiting for someone, all of them, not just Sirius; in the meantime, there are schedules to be updated, tea to accidentally knock over, overheard gossip to compare, and it’s getting late and later.

Someone gets into an argument. Sirius starts to pay more attention, only half an eye on the doorway.

But Remus does arrive, then, finally, thin in the dark doorway, bedraggled, shoulders wet with rain, and tries to slip around the backs of chairs to get to the free one at the end, just across the table corner from Sirius, where Sirius put his feet earlier to keep it free for Remus.

Remus, who looks tired, made worse by the lighting, and who is unsteady enough, apparently, to nearly trip over someone’s bag.

Without really looking away from him, Sirius pokes his wand at his own mug of tea, only two sips taken out of it, wordlessly reheats it, and puts it in front of where Remus is coming to sit.

It’s the right thing to do — Remus picks it up almost before he’s sat down properly.

“Thank you,” he says, very quietly, breathes it into the mug he has curled around, says it like he’s surprised, and he shouldn’t be, but this is war, Sirius reminds himself, this is war, nice things are getting away from them faster than they could make a grab for them even if they weren’t otherwise occupied.

“You’re welcome,” Sirius says, then makes a face at involuntarily having shown manners.

Remus smiles at him, over the rim of the mug.

His hair is falling into his face, damp, brownish-grey, darker for the dampness, going to be curlier soon when it dries, Sirius is familiar with that phenomenon and has always been fascinated with it, on Remus more than anyone else.

Sirius wants to reach out and tuck back the strand of hair sticking out next to Remus’ ear, or tug at it and see if it springs back when let go, he isn’t picky, he just wants to touch, card his fingers through Remus’ hair and have the back of his thumb touch, accidentally, Remus’ cheekbone, soft skin.

Remus blinks at him, lowering his eyes a little.

Someone clears their throat, and Sirius finally looks away, a little regretfully, and there are more things to plan and to disagree about, and Remus is here to be asked for something, a roll of parchment he produces out of his bag, though he seems distracted and, now that he’s being asked questions and being updated on bad news from all sides, in a mood about as bad as Sirius’ earlier.

Sirius leans closer when the conversation moves away and gets loud, kicks Remus in the shin under the table.

“Hey. Did something go wrong with the—”

“No.”

“Right,” says Sirius, “well, you look like you want to hurt someone, so.”

Remus sighs, and drinks more tea, and pulls his shoulders up around his ears.

“Pipe broke while I was gone,” he says, grimly. “And it dripped right out into the hallway, so all the neighbours know and whoever’s in charge of fixing that kind of mess has been notified, which means I can’t fix it with magic, because someone will ask questions.”

It’s such an everyday predicament that Sirius wants to laugh, but he doesn’t, mostly because he knows Remus doesn’t think it’s funny, and also because they’re still trying to be quiet.

“But that means it’ll get fixed soon, right?”

Remus laughs at that, rather humourlessly.

“It really, really won’t.”

Someone shushes them, and Remus turns away, and Sirius thinks for about two seconds before he opens his mouth again.

“You can live with me in the meantime.”

Remus only turns half towards him, and shakes his head

“Sirius…”

“I haven’t even transfigured the sofa back yet.”

That’s true, even. He hasn’t. He’ll say it was laziness if asked, but actually he just kind of… didn’t. Looked at the rumpled sheets of that narrow, misshapen transfigured bed and thought about Remus sleeping there, curling up, eyes closed, eyelashes fluttering, quiet snores maybe like he sometimes would have at Hogwarts. And then he didn’t transfigure it back.

“No,” says Remus, and they’re glared at, and Remus doesn’t look at Sirius for the rest of the meeting, studiously avoiding his eyes, but still holding on to the mug.

-

Sirius tries to bring it up again after the meeting, when they’ve stepped outside while Peter is still talking to someone. Tries to bring it up again because he’d rather not have Remus living in a possibly uninhabitable flat, and also because he would like to have Remus stay with him; mostly because Remus will do himself no favours staying at that place while it’s flooded, but also mostly because Sirius wants… he wants.

“I don’t know why you won’t just—”, he starts, and then breaks off, because Remus has lifted his chin stubbornly.

It’s not the right way to say it, anyway, Sirius knows, but he doesn’t know how to go about this; it’s not like getting him to come over for an evening or afternoon, where excuses are enough — “I’m bored,” Sirius will say, or, “I’ll drink all of it alone then,” or, “right, well, I’m gonna ask Peter instead,” and often it works, but this is a wholly different thing.

Sirius wants, though.

He just can’t figure out—

“I am perfectly fine with things being as they are.”

“Are you.” Sirius knows as he says it that his tone is going places, but Remus was rude first.

“Yes.”

He’s not even looking at Sirius, and his mouth is a thin line, annoyed, as if it’s Sirius’ fault that Remus Lupin is prickly and moody and inexplicably hates to have his friends offer perfectly good solutions to his problems.

“Well, fine, fuck you,” says Sirius, which doesn’t help, but that’s hardly his fault, either.

They stand there and seethe, both of them, and look away from each other and look out into the grey street grey sky grey rain, some car light blinking half-heartedly down the street.

“I would prefer not to continue having this argument,” Remus says, in that tone that means what he actually would prefer is to not admit that he has any part in it being an argument.

Which is, frankly, rich, considering that it’s mostly Remus’ fault.

“But why,” Sirius starts, and then stops, because Remus turns around and walks away.

Always, forever, but especially now, in this war, Sirius does not understand any part of this idiot, this strange tense wire of a boy, a young man, this endless contradiction, and especially now, in this war, it makes him want to scream sometimes, to not know, to be unable to understand or be understood by someone who resides indelibly inside his everything.

They just can’t talk to each other, he thinks, as he too starts walking home, not waiting for Peter. That’s the problem. Talking is difficult, for some reason.

If they’re in the right mood, if it’s the right time and the right place, when they were sixteen and half-drunk on hope and freedom and friendship and starlight, on top of a tower at one in the morning, it used to be easy to talk, but even then, even when they were sixteen, Remus was closed-off and Sirius irritated by it and both of them too easily offended and too quick to give up and too stubborn to actually stop talking; now that’s all they are, bumping into walls constantly, because all of the time, always forever, they are afraid and caught off guard and wrong-footed and half distracted by something else that needs more attention because it’s more likely to result in someone’s death.

So: talking is hard. Sirius neither knows what to say nor why every time he does know what to say it arrives wrong. He doesn’t know why Remus reacts sometimes like innocuous statements have slapped him in the face, and he doesn’t know how to get past the talking difficulty either.

Not talking, probably.

But what else is there, he thinks, what else is there that the war and growing up have not already gotten rid of.

The easiest thing, always, is touch, which is odd, because they don’t touch much.

Touch is merely what Sirius finds easiest to imagine, but he doesn’t like to dwell on it, nor does he act on it often.

The easiest thing then, actually, is action, is tea made and accepted and shared, is shopping remembered and offered, is cigarettes living in Sirius’ jacket and then in Remus’ and then Sirius’ again, back and forth, the easiest thing is new habits settling when they can where old habits are gone now, have been left at Hogwarts.

It doesn’t happen as much as Sirius would like, and he doesn’t know how to change that, either.

There’s a track there worn down by years and years of being in each other’s pockets, and he wants to set new things running along it, slightly off-kilter but they too will wear down the grooves until it’s effortless, can’t-imagine-life-without-it.

At least Sirius can’t.

Sometimes he wonders if Remus can, if Remus could just take Sirius out of his life and out of himself, if Sirius was ever part of Remus at all. Which is stupid, and Sirius refuses to think about that for any amount of time; of course he is, of course, there’s no other possibility with all their shared history, and Remus would hardly have put up with him for so long, would hardly have let flimsy pretences persuade him to spend more time with Sirius most of the time up until now, would hardly be in Sirius’ life still if he didn’t want to.

Remus Lupin does not do things he doesn’t want to do.

Oh, he pretends, sometimes, but Sirius doesn’t think he ever really has done something he didn’t want to, aside from the whole turning-into-a-monster-every-month thing, and he can’t refuse that even if he is the most stubborn person in all of Great Britain.

Still, Sirius doesn’t just want Remus to be in his life tangentially; he wants Remus to feel the same way about him that he feels about Remus, even though Sirius knows he couldn’t say, if asked, what way that is. Just, a part of him, he supposes. He wants to be as much a painful alive glowing part of Remus as Remus is of him. And he doesn’t know if he is, or how to find out, or how to find the words for it.

Not just because talking is difficult, but because the words themselves elude him.

-

James lets Sirius recount the argument, and doesn’t tell him that he was wrong but doesn’t tell him that Remus was wrong either, and Sirius feels better after that, though he doesn’t tell James about all of the feelings and confusions that came after the argument. It just helps to talk to James, as it always does.

James is still his home, even though Hogwarts isn’t anymore; Sirius is very, very glad for it.

He only wishes it were that easy with Remus.

The way he feels about James has always lived comfortably in him and around him; this other thing, this wanting, the way he can’t stop wishing for something he doesn’t know, when he’s around Remus and most of the time when he isn’t, too… that’s not comfortable at all.

Sirius doesn’t want to think about it, and he desperately wants to know what it is, and he’s still hung up on it two days later when something somewhere has gone wrong, nobody has told him the specifics, and there has to be an Order meeting.

To which Sirius is late.

Order headquarters isn’t big, of course it isn’t, and furthermore there are not enough chairs for the full crew, which is an achievement, because they are already very few; with all of them there this time, all of this is plenty obvious.

Sirius walks in to noise and chaos and to James calling “gotta share someone’s chair, mate” at him, and true to his words there’s barely room to breathe, let alone sit down; McGonagall looks like she may turn into a cat any moment to hiss at the next person who steps on her foot and Peter is standing awkwardly behind James and Remus.

James and Peter and Remus, and Sirius makes his way towards them with some effort, but James is grinning at him, half-turning, arm on the back of his chair, waiting for Sirius, and Remus is fidgeting in that reserved way he has, where some people don’t even notice he’s fidgeting, and Sirius doesn’t care whose chairs he knocks into to get there.

There’s still no free chairs, though, and briefly he considers telling Remus to scoot over, and then he wants to sprawl across Remus and James both, and then he’s walked over there and kicks at James to make him move over, and they sit on the chair with one leg each braced sideways so they don’t fall off, as if they’re twelve again, and Sirius can see Lily on the other side of the room making her way back over and she’ll probably sit on both of them, and Sirius can see out of the corner of his eye Remus, who is looking faintly amused.

He turns towards him.

There are raised eyebrows, from both of them, challenging, back and forth.

“Comfortable?”, Remus asks, familiar, mocking.

And just like that any doubts are irrelevant.

Sirius leans towards him yet more, across James, elbow braced against James and when James shoves at him braced on the table instead, and smirks at Remus.

“Would you rather I’d be sharing your chair, Moony?”

Remus goes a little pink in the face, and scoffs.

“Hardly.”

Sirius grins.

“Speaking of, though,” says Remus, and he looks like he very much regrets what he is about to say, which is interesting, “Transfigured that sofa back yet?”

“Did you change your mind?”, Sirius says, and accidentally elbows James again in his sudden excitement.

Remus looks definitely a little regretful now, and also some other things Sirius can’t identify that make his stomach go places it shouldn’t..

“Yes. Flooding has been mopped up, but I don’t get any water until the pipes are fixed, and it has been… strongly recommended to me, by everyone who has seen fit to make it their business, the landlord and my upstairs neighbour who apparently had to get the plumber in once, et cetera, that I stay with a friend.”

Something inside Sirius deflates, but he pushes it away, and leaves the grin on his face.

“Offer’s still on the table. When do we get your stuff?”

-

They get Remus’ stuff barely twenty minutes after that, it turns out, because after they’re briefed on what happened they’re told they won’t be involved in what will happen (it’s the worst, every time, to know about something and then not be allowed to act), and Remus shrugs, and they decide that now’s as good a time as any, and it’s not much of a walk to Remus’ place.

Remus walks quickly, chin tucked into the collar of his jacket, and clutches his bag to his side, and doesn’t speak for the whole walk.

So Sirius too doesn’t speak.

Remus doesn’t look at him either, only at the road ahead, but Sirius looks at Remus, as much as he can without tripping over something, looks at him and tries to figure him out, and figure himself out while he’s at it, but both of those are lost causes, probably.

It barely takes fifteen minutes until Remus stops in front of a building Sirius may have overlooked, frankly, even though he’s been there before, and Sirius stops too and waits for Remus to unlock a creaking door and lead him up a staircase that smells a little bad and echoes dissonantly.

“Come in,” Remus says, when he has stopped on a landing and unlocked the second door, and then sarcastically, “make yourself comfortable.”

Sirius follows Remus into the flat, and as is the problem with this flat always, stands immediately in the flat’s one room, which is familiar but not familiar enough to be comfortable.

Half a kitchen to the left, bed to the right next to the window; a bookshelf, new water damage on the floor, a Hogwarts trunk.

The Hogwarts trunk is more familiar than all the rest taken together, and that’s why it shouldn’t be here, Sirius thinks. It doesn’t belong here at all, that relic.

“Right,” Remus says, while Sirius is still just standing there a step into the room, “right, I think I have a bag that should fit everything I’ll need.”

And he goes to open the trunk and dig through it, drops onto one knee on the ground and leans his weight into opening the trunk the way he has always done, and the trunk’s lid heaves and then clatters. The way it has always done.

Sirius closes the door behind him, but only most of the way, and walks over, and perches on the edge of the bed.

That, too, is as he has always done, sitting on a bed and watching Remus dig through his things when it’s time to pack or to find something rarely-used, sitting on a bed and being unhelpful as Remus half crawls into his trunk and swears colourfully but indignantly-quiet, being unhelpful and waiting for Remus to emerge pink-faced, and laughing at him while knowing very well that Remus will laugh at him when he does his own last-minute packing and makes a terrible mess and steps on—

That won’t happen. They’re grown up now and this is not Hogwarts, it’s just that for a moment it feels exactly like Hogwarts, like any moment now James and Peter will start shooting socks at each other, thumb in the tip and pull and let go, gleeful cackling as the sock goes flying fuck knows where.

That won’t happen, none of that.

Sirius doesn’t laugh either, but he does wait for Remus to emerge, and while he’s waiting, he sits back properly on the bed, even though it makes him feel very oddly over-conscious of his own body.

“Remus,” he says, and Remus emerges and raises his eyebrows, “Moony, this is the least comfortable mattress in the world, how do you sleep on this.”

One corner of Remus’ mouth does something very complicated that ends in amusement, and Sirius goes on, encouraged.

“Really, I wouldn’t sleep in this bed for anything in the world.”

And that’s wrong, for some reason, and Remus’ face goes closed-off and Remus disappears again into the mythical land of making sensible decisions about packing, and Sirius is left sitting on the bed and feeling uncomfortable and waiting once more.

And, too, feeling like maybe he should have known, even though in this case he shouldn’t, and anyway there is a difference, vast, irritating, between being able to predict Remus’ reactions and being able to understand them, and that’s the problem.

Sirius knows what will make Remus clam up, knows what will make his shoulders slump, knows what will get a smile, most of the time at least, but he’s never sure why, and if he thinks too long about it he just gets more confused, because he can’t make it make sense, and asking Remus has only ever gotten him either the clamming-up or an explanation, halting, that made him annoyed in addition to the confusion, because it just didn’t make sense.

He spends a lot of time thinking about Remus, and it never gets him anywhere, and Remus is a mystery and probably, given how the rest of the world keeps going as normal, there must be a mystery within Sirius too. There _is_ a mystery there, there is, there’s always always that feeling that wants, that wants something, and over top of it, yelling desperately, there’s another feeling that just wants this to be easy.

“Done,” says Remus, and pushes up from the floor and swings a bag over his shoulder and kicks the trunk closed, and gestures towards the door.

-

Sirius doesn’t know what he expected, but the first evening of Remus living with him doesn’t feel like much at all, and isn’t much at all — there is no sudden glorious clock-turning-back moment of it being like the dormitory, there is no fighting no planning no laughing no close together anything, there is just the sofa transfigured with little fanfare, there is just both of them having eaten already, there is just it being late and Remus shuffling awkwardly into the bathroom once Sirius is done, there is goodnight goodnight I work tomorrow have to get up early alright alright goodnight goodnight.

Done, over, and Sirius tosses and turns, still separated from Remus by a wall and a confusion and he doesn’t know what else.

He isn’t woken up by Remus the next morning, not this time, and he gets up as late as he tends to do when he’s on his own, and he doesn’t know when Remus finishes working, and he has nothing to do, and he talks to James through the mirrors, and to Lily leaning over James’ shoulder.

And he waits for something to happen.

And he goes outside briefly to buy things he would otherwise have avoided buying for weeks yet, and he waits. And he gets antsy.

By the time Remus does get back, Sirius has built up an expectation again, and locked it away safely where it can’t taunt him, this is not Hogwarts this is not Hogwarts, and keeps expecting something anyway, and what he gets is just Remus, quiet, tired.

Setting rained-on shoes next to the door. Sighing in a way that’s felt more than heard.

Sirius is in the kitchen part of the living room, as far away from the sofa, from Remus’ bed, as the room will allow, and Remus walks in and walks into the kitchen and stands next to him and, wordlessly, switches on the radio.

Sirius reaches over, hand just brushing Remus’, to switch it off.

Some idiot instinct, and he doesn’t look up from Remus’ hand still hovering mid-air, bony fingers, a scrape on a knuckle, tidy nails bitten down at just the corners.

“I was listening to that,” Remus says, deliberately mildly.

“You weren’t, it wasn’t on long enough for that.”

Deliberate deliberate deliberate, but he didn’t take the mildness and Remus doesn’t have it anymore either.

“I was about to listen to it. I wanted to listen to it, in fact, before you so charitably made your opinion known.”

Sirius shrugs.

He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what any of this is or why it’s wrong.

“Do you want breakfast?”, he says.

Remus deflates, next to him, sighs again.

“It’s afternoon.”

“I know. I only have breakfast foods. And mould.”

“You may want to get rid of the mould.”

“Eh. Let’s get rid of the breakfast foods first.”

Another sigh, but this is right, this is less wrong than before, and Remus’ hand is running along the edge of the counter.

“Alright then. If I eat breakfast with you at four in the afternoon, will you allow me to listen to the radio?”

Sirius waves a hand, because of course, of course, and Remus switches on the radio, and Sirius looks up at him finally, and looks at him.

He’s listening intently and trying to make the radio less crackly, tiny frown line just appearing, and Sirius doesn’t look away just yet, while Remus is busy and not looking back.

There’s something about Remus’ face that makes Sirius never tire of looking at him.

Something about the way his hair curls around his face, about the way it parts, downy-soft-looking, just off-center, something about that dark spot at the corner of his eye, the asymmetry of his eyebrows, the wide flat pale scar running across his face and the half-dozen smaller ones more hidden.

Something in his eyes, probably, actually, or the corner of his mouth, the dip of it into a smile at Sirius’ expense.

Right now, it’s the little fold between his eyebrows that says he’s concentrating.

It’s just there, and Sirius wants to smooth it out or just poke at it and laugh about it, it’s just there, and Remus is here.

And Remus looks up from the radio and raises an eyebrow, and Sirius goes to get the breakfast foods and grimace at the mould.

-

So that’s how living together goes.

It’s not Hogwarts, it’s anything but that, it’s a different kind of mess and it’s a string of things that don’t go quite as they should and it’s a constant balancing act, would be a constant balancing act if either of them bothered to do the balancing.

Still: it’s kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to Sirius, to have this tiny bit of how it’s supposed to be, to not-really-but-almost have this back, to get to argue about inconsequential things and be in perfect harmony in everything that doesn’t even need agreement.

To have Remus around all day.

To have Remus sleeping on the sofa-transfigured-into-a-bed, to every day consider transfiguring it better but never get to it, to get toast crumbs on that sofa-bed (it’s the sofa, where else is he supposed to sit) and have Remus get annoyed at it and then roll his eyes when Sirius vanishes the crumbs wordlessly, show-off-y.

To, yes, get new routines.

In theory, Sirius knows this is temporary, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t.

Remus is living with him, Remus is there, Remus comes back from work in a mood and is sarcastic at Sirius, Remus has some things to say about dog hair everywhere, Remus makes tea too strong and Remus laughs at Sirius’ jokes and Remus walks to the next Order meeting with Sirius, and Remus walks home with Sirius too, the most natural thing in the world.

They stop, on their way back, at the fish & chips place down the street from where Sirius lives; it’s tiny, greyed white, barely bigger than its front window, plain red letters above it; they get chips, and Sirius carries the box because Remus needs his hands for gesturing while he talks.

He should be happy in a way that has arrived and is done, Sirius thinks, as he leads the way up the stairs and back into the flat, because he has as close an imitation of Hogwarts as he will get, and he is happy, he is, but that restless wanting is still there.

It’s there when Remus closes the door behind them and it’s there when Remus throws himself onto the bed-sofa and it’s there when Sirius collapses next to him and nearly drops the chips, and it still isn’t the same as anything else.

“Do not,” Remus says, “drop my food on the floor. Drop your own if you must, you’ll just turn into Padfoot and not even mind, but I would like my food to be not on the floor, if at all possible.”

Sirius grins at him.

Holds out the box like he’s going to drop it, laughs when Remus leans towards it, laughs harder when Remus wrestles it out of his grip, laughs with Remus half across him laughing too, and Remus kicks his shin, sideways, ineffectively, and they both have to stop laughing before they can separate and sit up.

It’s not like anything else, still.

It should be like any other friendship, or at least like the two other important friendships in Sirius’ life, only it isn’t, it isn’t like being friends with James or Peter, not just like those friendships are different, but different still.

It’s different from the surety and safety that Sirius expects when he thinks of friendship, when he thinks of being the Marauders.

Nothing about it is sure or safe or pronounceable, this wailing burning thing seeping out from between his ribs, and he doesn’t know what it is, still.

He wants to catch it between his hands and examine it, some days, and most days he wants to rip it out of his chest and pull it apart and demand of it to tell him what it is, why it is, what it wants from him, what it wants from Remus.

He can do no such thing, because that’s not how anything works, unfortunately, and also because Remus is looking at him weirdly.

Probably, very likely, Sirius has been staring.

Remus’ face is just a little pink, and before Sirius can drop his own confusion for long enough to think about that, he shakes his head, and Sirius becomes conscious instead of how little space there is on the bed-sofa, and slides onto the floor instead to lean next to Remus’ legs and look up at him, and Remus half-smiles, awkwardly, and hands the box back over.

And Sirius doesn’t know what to make of anything, and Sirius is sorely tempted to turn into Padfoot and jump back onto the bed and knock over the food and distract himself thoroughly.

He doesn’t.

He doesn’t, but it’s a near thing, and he does distract himself as much as he can, and Remus is there and it’s still good and that’s enough. That will be enough whether it wants to be enough or not, because Sirius has had enough of not knowing.

-

So that’s how living together goes.

At some point soon, Remus will go back to his own flat, but for now he’s with Sirius still, and for now they have impossibly much time to spend together, on the sofa-bed laughing, in the kitchen arguing, passing each other in the bathroom door and stopping for fully half an hour to talk about nothing in particular.

There are infinite things to do and say in the flat, miraculously, but of course they leave it, for work for Order meetings for shopping, and also they go out.

They don’t really, not for any conventional definition of going out, they’re both not in the mood for Muggle pubs (Sirius does not understand football nor does he care to) or Wizarding pubs (they get enough of the war already), definitely not in the mood for sitting down to eat or what-have-you, so they drift, late, through the cold rain and the dark streets, and press their noses against shop front windows.

Muggle things, most of them, have still not stopped being fascinating to Sirius, and he keeps asking Remus questions that Remus laughs at and sometimes doesn’t know the answer to, and they walk down one street like that and then another, and then they turn a corner and find a street without shops, darker, quieter, and calm down even as they walk less slowly again.

“What now?”, Remus says, after a few minutes.

When Sirius looks over at him, he can see in the stretched-out light of a streetlamp that Remus is looking back at him, hands in his pockets, expression as open as anything, and Sirius wants to do something stupid, anything stupid at all.

“Don’t know,” he says, and then nearly walks into a branch hanging over a fence and stops.

There’s a park behind that fence, he thinks, and Remus walks a few steps further and then stops too, still looking at Sirius.

Sirius starts walking again, but he also keeps looking through the fence into the park, where it’s dark like only trees can make the night, that rustling deep kind of darkness in which no shape has a beginning or an end.

He trails his hand along the fence, noiseless but cold cold cold tap tap tap, until it meets a hinge, and then he stops again, and Remus stops, and they stand in front of a gate, closed.

Sirius tries to push at it, and it groans, but doesn’t budge.

“It’s locked,” he says, unnecessarily, and nearly interrupts himself to say, “let’s break in!”

“Into the park.” Amused. Not even opposed enough to be deadpan.

Sirius grins.

“Into the park.”

Going over a fence is as easy as breathing, and they disappear between the trees and Sirius wants to turn into Padfoot, so he does, and runs ahead then runs back again, leans into Remus’ legs and makes him stumble a bit, and Remus catches himself and buries a hand in Padfoot’s fur.

“Fucking menace,” he says, no bite in it.

And he pulls away, and they keep walking, under trees and around puddles, until they step into a blurry rectangle of light from a window somewhere, and from the same window there is music, piano, a little clumsy, like someone practicing.

Sirius turns back into himself to stand next to Remus and see his face properly, how he’s looking up at the window and seems to be trying to listen with every sense he has, eyes wide.

It’s a waltz, nearly, if it weren’t halting; becomes more of a waltz with every bar the pianist gets through, and Sirius is looking at Remus and the light from the window falling in angles onto his face, making his eyelashes throw long shadows when he blinks, and Sirius doesn’t notice his own foot tapping along insistently until he’s swaying in half-circles already.

He only notices how close he’s standing to Remus then, too, when he bumps into him.

Remus looks away from the window, and the shadows on his face shift.

“What are you doing?”

Sirius shrugs.

“Ballroom dancing, I guess.”

“Without a partner?”

Remus looks amused again, and something else that waits with bated breath behind the words, and Sirius holds out a hand before he can think about it, flourishes the way he did when he’d gallop around the dormitory with James.

It still doesn’t feel anything like it would if he were with James, but that’s because he’s never danced with Remus before, because Remus has in the past always shaken his head at this and laughed, but Remus hesitates only a little this time and takes Sirius’ hand.

Remus’ hand is colder than Sirius’, and dry, rough where Sirius’ fingers brush his knuckles, and Sirius holds it and pulls Remus into position, and steps.

And steps, and Remus steps, and it’s not any less clumsy than the music, and it’s dark enough that when their dancing carries them out of the window’s light, they can’t see their feet, and Sirius hasn’t danced in a while and Remus has, as far as Sirius knows, not done much dancing at all, and everything about their combined angles and stuttering laughing breaths is slightly unbalanced, and it’s not as ridiculous as dancing with his friends usually is, and it’s good anyway.

And Remus steps on Sirius’ foot, and Sirius says “ow,” and then “wrong direction,” and Remus laughs.

He really is going in the wrong direction, Remus is, suddenly, and Sirius is full to bursting with _something_, and he steps on Remus’ foot on purpose, and Remus says, mockingly, “ow.”

Sirius huffs.

“No, no, look,” he says, and Remus laughs at him and pulls at his arm to make him turn the wrong way too, and Sirius lets him.

Lets him and lets this become safely the funny thing it’s supposed to be, a joke and a mess, and he looks at Remus and Remus is grinning, and Sirius grins back.

It’s dizzying, to be happy, to see Remus happy, to have made Remus happy. Sirius wants to do it again.

He’d forgotten, almost, pretty much entirely, what this is like, this true complete delighted removal from the rest of the world, this kind of happiness, to have made that, to be capable of making that happen. He’d forgotten, and he doesn’t know how he managed that, because clearly this is the meaning of life, or something, seeing that eye-crinkle and mouth-twitching, hearing that snort and the laugh that follows.

And there’s that feeling still but it’s night and nothing is real and it doesn’t matter how he wants and he wants.

He wants, he wants, he doesn’t know what he wants.

He wants everything and then some.

And it doesn’t matter.

And then it especially doesn’t matter because someone yells in their direction and they’re somewhere they’re not supposed to be and years-old instincts kick in and they fall over themselves and each other running into the darkness, away, and then they remember that they can apparate, and they do so and stumble into Sirius’ flat, still breathless, still close.

And Sirius is disoriented, and Sirius steps away to switch on the light, and the flat is lit harshly and everything comes into focus again, and something is gone and over; and they collapse against the wall, two steps apart, laughing, overwhelmed, relieved.

-

“I know when the pipes will be fixed,” Remus says the next day when he comes back from work later than he has been the last week.

“Oh,” says Sirius, stupidly. “That’s good?”

Remus doesn’t seem to even hear him.

“I’ll be able to go back and get out of your hair two days from now, hopefully.”

Sirius is still holding the mirror through which he was talking to James just a few minutes ago, it’s just dangling there in his hand in front of the bottom cabinets, next to where Sirius is leaning, and Sirius feels like even without the mirror he’d be more sure about how to communicate with James right now than with Remus, who is right here.

Right here in Sirius’ flat, but not for much longer apparently.

“You can stay longer if you want.” You can stay forever, he doesn’t say, because the words sit too eagerly in his mouth and he doesn’t know what to do with that, and also because Remus is already frowning.

“Sirius, I have my own flat, which I can and do pay for and live in. There’s no reason for me to be here. I do not need to, to move in with you.”

“I’m not asking you to, to,” they’re both stuttering angrily at each other now, which is unfortunate and will sooner or later escalate, but for anything in the world, Sirius cannot figure out why Remus is angry or why he himself is stuttering.

It’s not just anger.

Something’s twitching meanly at his heart, tapdancing painfully in his stomach, and Remus has a pinched look on his face.

“Good,” he says, “because the answer to that would be a resounding no.”

He really does look like he’s eating a lemon, very determinedly so and that doesn’t make it better, and it’s altogether an expression Sirius hasn’t seen on him before or if he has then not often, and he looks unhappy and closed-off and Sirius wants him to stop looking like that, wants his mouth to curve into something absent-minded or amused again.

Sirius does also, now that he’s been made to think about it, want Remus to move in with him, wants to see him every morning and every night, wants to be sprawled next to him and half on top of him on the sofa (where’s the sofa coming from, he should wonder but doesn’t bother with, where’s the sofa coming from in that reality in which it would surely always be Remus’ bed), wants to argue with him every day about groceries and the radio and anything they can find to be grumpy about, wants to be standing close in the kitchen, shoulders touching.

Wants to see Remus happy again.

Wants to make him happy, wants to re-learn what used to be easy, wants to be once more as good at getting delighted surprised smiles and hiccuping laughter out of Remus as he used to be at Hogwarts, wants to have the time for that, because time together is so hard to get, being as they are grown up, being as they are at war, being as they are at odds it seems.

Nothing, usually, is as simple as wanting, was as simple as wanting: want it, do it, there it is, if there’s a mess it won’t be bad enough to not do the same thing over again.

He doesn’t know how to just go get what he wants, in this case.

The mirror is still in his hand, easy, metal warmed by his hand, buzzing with magic.

Remus isn’t looking at him anymore.

-

It’s Remus’ last morning at Sirius’ flat, they have been reminding each other incessantly and joylessly and stubbornly.

Sirius has stopped arguing, quicker than he would have liked, about Remus staying — Remus will go back to his flat, would go back whether or not the pipes are actually fixed now, it is what it is, Remus will be Remus will be needlessly stubborn, and Sirius is stubborn too but he doesn’t know what to be stubborn about in this, so he’ll get used to being alone in his flat again, as used as he’s ever been, and he’ll transfigure his sofa back.

Probably.

Maybe he’ll just wait until it turns back on its own, the spell was never strong enough to keep.

Anyway, there is a truce, of sorts; nobody will leave in a huff or stay in a sulk, Sirius thinks, Sirius hopes, Sirius determines.

He gets up before Remus for once, and he has somewhere to go on Order business, there was an owl the day before, so he’s awake and dressed and ready to face something or other, to face unexciting but time-consuming Order business, to face Remus, to face the sofa-bed that has done its duty, he’s awake and dressed and making tea for Remus (yes, as strong as he likes it), and waiting for the toaster, which is getting slower every day, and waiting for Remus who went into the bathroom seemingly an eon ago without properly opening his eyes.

Remus doesn’t have anywhere to be today, Sirius thinks, except back at his own flat soon, and so he’s being slow, but magic will keep the tea warm.

In the meantime, the toaster is lazy and the tea is steeping, and Sirius goes to sit on the sofa, bed, sofa, thing, with the mirror which had been waiting on the kitchen counter, and calls James, because he promised to, yesterday.

James looks sleep-ruffled and grins at him, from the tiny frame, and leans closer as if that’ll do much and informs him that he looks like shit, and Sirius can, viscerally, feel himself relax, feel himself settle into this, easy as breathing, quip back, talk, listen.

They’ve always talked at each other and over each other and still Sirius thinks they’ve both always felt heard and listened to, and he is so glad for James Potter, even if he does insult him and get insulted back daily.

Lily leans over James’ shoulder at some point, arms around his shoulders, meeting in front of his chest, and Sirius knows without having to see that James’ hand goes up to hold hers.

He’s glad to see her too, and she grins at him too, and hooks her chin more closely over James’ shoulder to talk to the two of them, and the toaster finally triumphantly ejects slightly-charred toast.

Sirius wants to get up and get the toast, mirror still in hand, but Remus chooses that moment to come in.

Still sleepy, looking less wary, Sirius thinks, and even less so when he sees the mirror.

“Talking to James?”

He’s got his toothbrush in his hand and walks over and puts it in his bag, and checks the contents of the bag and closes it.

Sirius looks back at the mirror.

“Remus says good morning,” he says.

“Remus can say good morning himself if he wants to,” says Remus, amused, and shoves the bag aside and sits down next to Sirius to lean over his shoulder and smile at James and Lily, Sirius can’t see the smile but he can see James and Lily’s answering smiles and he thinks he could feel Remus’ smile if Remus would just move a little closer, conveniently fitting himself into the limited field of vision of the mirror, if Remus would just—

Remus doesn’t move closer exactly, but he does settle and exchange pleasantries with James and Lily, and Sirius can feel Remus’ knee against his thigh and the breath of Remus’ laugh against his cheek, and Sirius wants to spend every morning like this, with his favourite people close, and Sirius wants Remus to not leave, and he doesn’t know what any of his feelings are, still, still, he still doesn’t know, but he thinks maybe he can figure out what he wants and leave the stupid feelings out of it, and that’ll be—

“By the way,” says Remus, close to his ear but leaning away, why is he leaning away. “Did you mean to do something with the toast or…?”

And that’s the other thing, and that’s reality and time clicking back into place.

“Fuck,” Sirius says, and to James, “Sorry, I have to go, Order business.”

“You need toast for Order business?”, says Lily, smirking, and Sirius says “good_bye_” and puts the mirror aside and gets up and goes over and fishes the toast out of the toaster and rummages for butter and a knife and doesn’t have all the hands he needs to do everything at the same time, and Remus follows and gets the butter for him, and Sirius butters his toast and looks at his watch.

He has to leave, he has to leave immediately because he has a train to catch; he has to leave, and because Remus is standing in his kitchen and leaning against the humming fridge, is still a little sleepy-eyed, with a tiny smile pulled sideways by a scar, and because it hasn’t been long at all really since Hogwarts, and years of sharing a home have ingrained some deeply deeply absurd things, Sirius eats half of his piece of toast by way of shoving it into his mouth and then shoves the other half into Remus’ hand, and Remus, automatically, takes it and takes a bite.

And Sirius turns and goes and hasn’t finished chewing yet by the time he puts on shoes and coat.

“You’re gonna have to let yourself out,” he calls, through the last bits of toast, and hears Remus answer indistinctly, muffled further by the noise of the door opening.

And Sirius leaves.

-

Being in Muggle London on Order business is a stark reminder, always, of how isolated they are in their war, and then it is, firstly, a relief, to be away from the war, among crowds and throngs and escalatorfulls of people who have no idea of the war, and whose worries are not about death and death and death; but secondly, it is uncomfortable, terrible, to be among people who don’t know anything about the war and may still fall victim to it, and terrible and uncomfortable to be very probably the only person who could save anyone if something were to happen, in an echoing hall packed full of people shuffling impatiently, in a train carriage filled with people standing like sardines and clutching briefcases jealously, in any mass of living breathing bodies who have lives and loves and absolutely, completely no idea that they are in danger.

He isn’t a worry-person, he doesn’t have these worries, often, but he is aware of the potential, and he hates it.

There is nothing that ruins a morning more than vaguely anticipating that one may end up indirectly responsible for the deaths of a street full of Muggles.

Or a train carriage, or the platform filled with people waiting for the train, but Sirius isn’t thinking about that this morning.

As soon as he’s on the train, as soon as he’s sitting, has pushed to the front of a crowd and dropped quickly into a seat, as soon as he’s there and looking out of the window and waiting for everyone else to sit and the train to do its thing, he goes back to thinking about Remus.

There’s no sense going back to how he’ll miss having him in his flat, Sirius has thought about that one enough, but he goes back to the thought anyway, the odd yearning that’s just sitting there, out in the open these days, never put away anymore.

Sirius doesn’t know what to do with it.

He doesn’t know what to do with it, but he’s been turning it around and around all day every day, it feels like, and just this morning, he knows, it’s still vividly there, he was thinking about it, and as he thinks about it again, still tired and confusedly acceleratedly awake, he still… wants to do away with the thinking and just want instead, because he knows from wanting, and doing what he wants.

And he knows what he wants, because he wants always.

He doesn’t know how to name and label and explain and justify his feelings, box them up tie a bow around sell them convincingly to the rest of the world, but he knows what he wants, and what he wants is to keep Remus close, what he wants is to know Remus, what he wants is to put the rough burned pad of his thumb right where bones and muscle-tendon-skin make an indent above Remus’ collarbone, what he wants is to step close until he has to jigsaw-puzzle his feet in between Remus’, what he wants is to tilt his own head and hope Remus tilts his and lean in until their mouths touch.

Oh, Sirius thinks, as the train doors close and the train starts moving. Oh.

He wants to _kiss_ him. He wants to kiss Remus Lupin, and somehow this is the first time he realises that that’s what it is. Which is ridiculous — all the other longed-for intimacies are much more intimate, things he would know, if any other boy felt them about some girl, to be signs of something very specific that is very mundanely nameable, but for himself, for this, as relates to Remus John Lupin, it always just felt like. Like what it should be and would inevitably forever be, like that was just what it was, like the axis the earth spins lopsidely on, or whatever.

Except kissing, now that he has imagined it clearly enough to not be able to undo it, kissing, that’s something that has a name, and with that name come a whole lot of other names, and a whole lot of other words, with a whole lot of baggage.

Sirius has been looking for a word, a definition, but now suddenly he doesn’t want it.

It’s hard to define, it’s hard to say what it is about Remus and even harder to say what it is that Sirius feels, really, there’s no way to put all of it into a word, but he knows, suddenly, in theory, technically, what the word for it is, what word people would use for it, but that word is bad, that word means something bad and unpleasant and he has never, until now, managed to make the connection between it and his feelings, and feels utterly stupid for it.

How could he have known though, he thinks, how could he, who in their right mind would feel all-consuming fond and confused and burning up all over, feel like a spinning light-up something-or-other, breathless from having too much air in his lungs, who in their right mind would feel something so big and unnameable and holy and horrifying, all that, and dare to name it such, know to name it such, know to stamp it down neatly and dirtily into a sneering little word that means nothing at all.

It’s not even entirely about good or bad, it’s about: this feeling that is everything cannot possibly be that limited little file-it-away-and-forget-it word.

Except it is.

Along the way somewhere, Sirius missed a memo everyone else got, and now here he is with a feeling he can’t contain and a word he still doesn’t know the meaning of, and he’s no closer to understanding any of it, and he is utterly, utterly lost.

-

He barely manages to do his mission right, only manages in fact because it’s not a difficult mission, barely a mission at all and he still stumbles through it half-distracted, and it doesn’t quite distract him from his own thoughts, and he’s handed a thing and goes to hand it off and for once it doesn’t bother him that he doesn’t get to know what it is, and he heads home, and he feels, still, frozen, feels rooted to the spot where he was when he realised.

Being back at his flat doesn’t help.

Remus left and left no trace, sometime during the day, and he must have transfigured the bed back because the sofa is there and looks as it used to, maybe cleaner, and Sirius is almost relieved to not have to look at that bed.

He goes out again to get food.

The food goes on a plate, even, keep his hands busy keep his mind busy, he keeps trying to find something to do but there isn’t anything and James and Lily said earlier they were going to go out and it’s all no use, Sirius just keeps coming back to the earlier thought, he just keeps coming back to Remus Remus Remus, ceaselessly, senselessly, goes in circles to return as quickly as possible to that train of thought again.

The food tastes like something, probably.

He can’t stop thinking about thinking the word, can’t stop trying to form it with his mouth and then giving it up as a wrong and hopeless thing, can’t stop considering in this new light what it means that he wishes Remus were here still.

Can’t stop wanting to think again about kissing Remus, either.

Sirius does his dishes, the piled-up ones too, some of which are Remus’ probably, does his dishes by hand to distract himself and ends up only giving himself the space to think about it more, hands in the too-hot soapy water trying to get the tea rings out of mugs, mind free to wander.

Mind free to go to the same thought and stay there, stubbornly.

It’s unsettling, unpleasant, un-something.

He wants, actually, to be thinking about kissing Remus, only he can’t quite, because really what he’s thinking about is what it means to be thinking that, what it would mean to keep thinking it, to say it out loud maybe to someone, anyone.

Because there’s still the loud bright secret feeling, and the wanting, and there’s also the word for it, and the word keeps coming back to sit on the other feelings and forbid Sirius from having fun or being as happy as he would like.

He wants, very much, to kiss Remus, and he wants to think about all the other things he could want, and he doesn’t want that word there while he thinks about it.

Feeling like he does about Remus has always been frustrating and overwhelming and awestruck and terrified, but suddenly, suddenly, with the advent of new knowledge, with having categorised and defined and unmasked it, it’s a thing to be afraid of in a disgustingly mundane way.

The cosmic ache was one thing; knowing that people will think they can with authority apply their words and opinions to it and dismiss it like it’s not worth anything is another, and much worse somehow.

This should be a good revelation to have had, he thinks, angrily; he wants the revelation of wanting to kiss Remus to feel like the thought of kissing Remus feels, he wants to be able to run panicked with how gloriously happy he is, and no words hanging over him threatening to ruin it all.

What does he need words for, anyway, he wants to yell, wants to scream, even though he’s still got his hands in dishwater with potato bits, what does he need the word for, he doesn’t want the word, he just wants Remus.

Only, he knows, only, he won’t get to have Remus, won’t get to speak this feeling or act this feeling, without the word being there whether he wants it or not.

It’s a mess, is what it is, and as he’s letting the water drain from the sink, running more water to get rid of soggy food bits, glancing at where a mug is standing in the same place he put it this morning for Remus, it occurs to him that for now, for right now, he’s a little glad Remus isn’t here anymore.

It’s a horrible thing, to not be as close as possible to Remus now that he knows much more clearly what it is he wants; it’s also a good thing, probably, that Remus isn’t living with him anymore.

He wants Remus there to know for sure, to know if the feeling holds up with Remus right in front of him, to know if seeing Remus’ face will change anything about how desperately Sirius suddenly wants to kiss him.

He wants Remus to be there, too, to have a better reference for what it may be like to kiss him, he wants to know for sure where every scar goes, know for sure how the two of them fit together next to each other on a sofa or leaning against the kitchen counter, what that small distance before a kiss feels like.

But if he’s being honest with himself, he has no idea how he would or should or could react to Remus right now.

-

There’s a lot of pieces to put together the correct way at last.

Memories and bits of feelings, things he’s done and ways he’s reacted, that fit together in recognizable shapes now, a disconcerting assembly of his self into something marginally less nebulous.

It’s as easy as breathing, to fit this named feeling into what Sirius knows of himself, but he has not yet gone with that feeling to where other people are, existed with this alien thing inside him among other people, and he suspects that will be less easy, if only because his mind is still preoccupied with it, can’t stop spinning around it.

Soon it will fade into background noise, he thinks, soon, but for now it’s new and raw and not done settling, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Strange, that he used to think naming it would make it easier, but naming it has only succeeded in making things more complicated, drawing lines that say, oh he may want to do that thing, he may know what he wants and be ready to thoughtlessly act on it, but there’s a line there, he doesn’t know where, beyond which what he wants has a bad name.

And he doesn’t care about the bad name, he doesn’t, he cares very little about authority or consensus or society at large, but he does care an awful lot about Remus.

It makes him have to stop in his tracks sometimes during the days he spends processing, makes him have to put his hands to his face and grin stupidly, how much he cares about Remus, and soon, soon, he will stop caring what other people think, as he always does, but he won’t stop caring about what Remus thinks, and so the whole entire plan of setting out to get what he wants is put aside, for now.

Such a neat mental image it made, still makes, that thought that he doesn’t have to wait for the world to make it easy, doesn’t have to wait for the world to give him what he wants, but he doesn’t know how he would go about anything, with this.

He does know there are other things he wants, though, other people he misses, and that’s all less complicated, that particular thing he can do something about, there he can go unthinkingly and ask for things, cheat the universe for more time with his friends.

If he’s being honest still, Sirius doesn’t know how to face James yet either, not quite, because he will, most likely, know there’s something Sirius isn’t telling him, and they just don’t do that. But Sirius doesn’t know how to say this, and there’s a thing there of, he doesn’t know, of it being nobody’s business, of it not having stopped being a deep and private and sacred thing just because it has a name that Sirius won’t say yet.

So that’s that, but… at some point, Sirius thinks, James may know, or will know, or might know, or should know because they don’t keep secrets from each other and if something is assigned a word it is no longer nothing and therefore no longer not a secret, at some point circumstances will conspire and James will assign the word to him too and. And.

He doesn’t actually know what will happen then.

Peter, though, perceptive as he may be when it suits him, Peter is not James and Sirius doesn’t owe him any secrets, and furthermore Peter is happy to spend time with Sirius even if it involves, mostly, getting into an argument about Quidditch at the Leaky Cauldron when they didn’t plan to end up there really. It’s an evening spent well and in good company, and it’s a relief and oddly a miracle, to go out into the world again and find that the world and he are still the same, and then on top of that it is a victory, feels like pulling the rug out from under the war, feels like saying to the universe that yes he will have his friends, his family, still and again, yes he will conquer all, and damn the war.

It feels like a victory and he goes home humming to himself, which is a step, which is several steps into a good direction.

He does also, when he’s brushing his teeth that night, think for too long about Remus and start feeling faint again, again, again, but that too shall be conquered.

Soon, he tells himself. Soon everything will be right again.

-

Alice and Frank throw a belated birthday party for someone which is also an early birthday party for someone else, it’s complicated and Sirius wasn’t there when someone had that bright idea, but he’s invited obviously, as is the majority of the people he knows at this point, the younger parts of the Order, and what it ends up looking like is a mess of bodies too tired for their age squeezed into someone’s house on the outskirts of what is already a very small town, and all of them too relieved at this respite from the war to make good choices.

Sirius, surrounded by friendly faces and carefully, guiltily on the other side of the room from Remus, is relieved too, and probably going to make bad choices too because there’s no fun in not doing that, but mostly relieved.

He’s found James and they’re as attached to each other as they ever were in the Gryffindor common room, and as he’s hanging off of James, arm around James’ shoulders and James’ elbow digging into his side, Sirius feels like he can breathe again.

James is talking too loudly and Lily has insulted him fondly and gone to talk to Alice and probably to whoever has had or will have a birthday, and James hasn’t immediately spotted something metaphysically different about Sirius, and it’s not just like always, though that would be more than enough, it’s almost like Hogwarts, it’s like not a single worry, it’s being in the right place.

Here’s home, here’s safety, here’s a reprieve from—

He turns his head and there Remus is, and Remus is looking at him, and Sirius’ heart thumps wildly and unsteadily in his chest, beats against his sternum like it wants to explode right out.

Being something like in love, Sirius thinks, hazily, is much more trouble than it’s worth, so far.

Except then Remus smiles at him, and that little lighting-up makes Sirius light up inside in a way that he thinks must be visible from space, like if there are eleven-year-old wizards on Mars being tortured with astronomy like tiny first year Sirius was, they’ll see through their telescopes the flare of Sirius responding to a simple smile.

It does make Sirius wonder how he never noticed before what this feeling was. Surely it must have been this noticeable always, and surely he must have thought about it before.

(He knows that he hasn’t, and he knows too that it’s because he generally prefers not to think about unknowns and uncomfortable things if he doesn’t need to.)

James digs his elbow more firmly into Sirius’ side.

“Hey. Mate. Are you listening?”

“No,” Sirius says, unrepentant, and tears his eyes if not his thoughts away from Remus to grin at James.

James shakes his head at him.

James launches into his story again, too, and it’s one that Sirius recognizes and chimes in with, but below that he is still… something like in love. He hadn’t let himself think those words yet either. Something like in love, something like in love with Remus Lupin, and it’s a big feeling, too big for his body, but there it is, there it lives inside him, something like being in love.

It just lives there, and Sirius still doesn’t know exactly how to face Remus now, but he doesn’t think he could stop himself from going over there, from talking to Remus, even if he tried, and he has no interest in trying. This is still, always, the thing that pulls him inevitably towards Remus, and so he goes.

James wraps up a story, and Sirius unwinds himself from being a ridiculous four-legged two-headed boy-creature with his best friend.

“Gonna go talk to Remus,” he says, and hopes he sounds less shakily elated than he feels, and does as he has announced he will do.

Remus is waiting for him when he gets to him, is leaning against a wall and looking towards Sirius, who puts his hands in his pockets and grins at him, maybe too wide, but when has he not grinned too widely at Remus, never, never ever.

“Hey,” he says.

Remus quirks a corner of his mouth in not quite as happy a way as Sirius would like.

“Hey.”

“Are the pipes fixed, then, or have you been stubbornly living in an aquarium for the past week?”

“I highly doubt that even if the pipes hadn’t been fixed my flat would have flooded enough to be called an aquarium.”

“Listen,” Sirius says, before he’s thought about it at all, just goes jumping right into saying things the wrong way, “Listen, you could have stayed longer, really.”

“Sirius—”

“No, I know, but I liked having you—”

“Oh,” says Remus, and, “Oh, I have to get another drink, give me a moment,” and Sirius doesn’t know what that—

“I can get you a drink,” he says.

Remus, strangely shifty, swallows, and deflates a little, leans back into the wall he had pushed off of, looks down.

“Alright. If you insist.”

“I do insist,” Sirius says, and flees.

He does get Remus another drink, knows without thinking what it will be, and gets himself another one too, to have something to do with his hands, and stops on his way out of the kitchen to check if Remus is still where he left him.

He is.

Sirius makes his way back slowly, says hi to Dorcas and Lily when he passes them, struggles past the many legs stretching too far over everything in front of the sofa, steps carefully and still gets to Remus too quickly to know what to do.

“There you go.”

Drink held out, and Remus takes it, fingers brushing Sirius’ and then more than brushing, and Sirius lets go of the glass too late but it’s better than too early, better to feel over-conscious of the places they touched than to have a drink spilled, but he has to look away for a moment to catch his breath.

“So,” he says.

“So.”

Remus sounds amused, and Sirius looks back at him.

There is something about Remus’ face, he thinks, dizzily, that makes Sirius never tire of looking at him, and he knows the name for it but the why is still a breathless mystery, and either way there’s a strand of hair sticking out wrong and sticking to Remus’ skin a little, and there’s a loose eyelash on his cheek, and.

“Have I got something on my face,” says Remus, flatly.

Sirius nods.

“Eyelash,” he says, and stupidly, stupidly, reflexively, reaches out to point but keeps reaching until his fingers, reverent, touch Remus’ cheekbone, and his thumb brushes off the eyelash, and his heart must be audible to Manchester at the very least.

And Remus’ eyes are wide, and he breathes a stuttering breath, and Sirius can’t see in the low light if he’s blushing but is suddenly, horribly, sure that he is, and that’s too much too soon.

“Uhm,” he says, on a breath that is too busy rushing every which way to carry much sound.

“Thank you for,” Remus says, shakes his head. “Sorry.”

And Sirius shakes his head too.

“Did you hear Prongs tell that story from sixth year again earlier?”

Remus laughs, untenses a bit, props one foot against the wall, looks at Sirius properly again.

“Did he grossly misrepresent my contribution again?”

“What do you think of him, Moony, is that doubt I hear?”

“So, he did.”

“Of course he did.”

And Remus laughs again, and Sirius grins at him, and everything is easy.

-

Everything is not easy at all, or maybe it’s too easy, it’s like the time Sirius stepped on one of the trick steps in first year and went down much further than that movement was supposed to carry him, it’s like expecting a wall and being okay with that and finding instead a door that isn’t even locked.

Getting through the rest of the birthday party is easy, because it’s familiar, all of it, and then Sirius goes home and his heart comes rushing into his throat and falling into his stomach and his head is frantically trying to find room to process yet more too-new too-big information.

Because Remus reacted, he reacted, like someone who feels… something like what Sirius feels, Sirius guesses, and on review it’s not an isolated incident.

So far, Sirius has only reassessed his own feelings, shuffled them and made a coherent narrative of them, but here Remus’ reactions are, here’s another coherent narrative, very similar to the first; if he thinks about it, there it is, a whole collection of blushes and stuttering, years back maybe but at the very least months, blushes and stuttering and maybe, given how Remus is, an explanation for some of the prickliness, and it’s unexpected riches and it’s too much too soon, still.

Sirius isn’t yet done settling into his own feelings, settling into even just having them secretly and by himself, and now here’s reality not just looking at his feelings, that would be a different thing, but knocking at his door and telling him that the step he would have to take is so very small.

So very small, as easy as that, as easy as finding the right word and saying it to Remus and having everything unravel and resolve itself like something more than magic, like gravity, but there wasn’t supposed to be gravity here, Sirius didn’t think about if there might be, he hadn’t gotten to that point.

And he may yet be wrong, because he doesn’t understand Remus, but he may not be, and he doesn’t know which one he wants less, in that moment.

It’s too much, in a way that’s frightening.

But he does want Remus, he does, and Remus isn’t right in front of him right this second, and hypothetically, theoretically, while it’s dark and Sirius is alone and the window is wide open and he’s sitting on the windowsill, in this safe and not-wholly-real time and place, Sirius does want Remus to feel the same, he wants it with all he has, of course he wants that, and maybe he has that.

He doesn’t know what he would do about it, but that’s a later step anyway, there will be time to improvise again later, and it occurs to him, as he’s hanging out of the window, breathing in the night air that’s slightly less disgusting than the daytime London soup, that yes, Remus may feel the same, and if he wants to know for sure, and to get to have at least a little bit more, Sirius can just… test the waters, can try again on purpose to get reactions like he did at that party.

Is it a bad idea, to run headlong into something that he isn’t ready for and that may well make a mess of everything? Of course, but that’s the appeal of ideas, most of the time.

-

He sees Remus next because of Order business, again, because the war won’t go away anytime soon and there is so much to do, and he’s back to not knowing how to approach his friends, apparently, but there’s this anyway, there’s scrolls and scrolls of parchment to roll out and compare and charts to be made, in a smaller room at headquarters, because the main room is needed for potion-making. Lily is in the main room, Sirius thinks, but he’s with the scrolls and the charts and the cramped corner of a hallway.

James left when Sirius arrived, punched Sirius’ shoulder and told him three unrelated things in one breath and rushed off, and then Sirius sat on a creaking chair and started working on his charts, and he’s starting to suspect he’ll end up leaving before Remus arrive.

It feels like he’s been waiting with bated breath for the last few days if not weeks, but definitely for the last few days, waiting to poke at his feelings until something explodes, anticipating a chance to be where Remus is, and now Remus isn’t even there.

Remus arrives barely a few minutes late though, of course, and sits down and asks Sirius what they’re supposed to be doing, and Sirius feels his own body language go more open, because it always has, probably, and there’s the feelings but they’ve been familiar for much longer than the word has been, this is Remus this is one of his best friends this is the boy Sirius learned to turn into a dog for, and Sirius leans his elbows on the table and explains, and Remus too starts working.

It’s dull work, and complicated when Sirius least expects it, and they work in silence.

Sirius keeps looking up at Remus, briefly, at his dear familiar face, and then back down at the work, which gets more tedious by the second.

There are loud noises from the kitchen, but that’s not anything new.

“What are they doing in there?”, says Remus, barely looking up, writing in his steady handwriting.

“Potions,” says Sirius, puts down his own quill for a moment. “I think Lily’s in there? Definitely Fabian is there, and James says Dung has been in and out.”

“Ah.”

Quiet again, the scratching of the quills, numbers and places and codewords to sort through, scrolls to swap back and forth with only half a word needing to be said, familiar rhythm of working together; at some point, Lily does indeed emerge from the kitchen, hair up but mostly out of the bun again and frizzy around her face, and she smiles absently at them and stomps outside, door loud, presumably to get some fresh air.

Sirius looks at Remus, who has his eyebrows raised and is looking after Lily, and when Remus looks back at Sirius, Sirius makes a face.

Remus laughs.

Looks down at his chart again, but stops, and looks up before Sirius has yet looked away.

“Can you help me with this bit? Something’s off, and I can’t find it.”

“Course,” and Sirius drops his own charts and moves his chair halfway around the table, noisily, and settles close to Remus to look over his shoulder.

And moves the chair another little bit, and then they’re too close, touching.

Their legs are touching, the length of their thighs, lightly, which is worse than firmly, and Sirius’ heart is… something.

He puts his hand on Remus’ arm to lean into his space more, to look at the charts more easily.

It’s a simple touch, it would be a simple touch if Sirius didn’t feel like he’s going to tremble right out of his skin and set the room on fire by sheer force of emotion, it should be a simple and innocent enough touch, and Remus reacts like he too is about to implode.

It’s obvious, now that Sirius knows to look for it, knows what it is he’s looking for.

Remus doesn’t quite flinch nor quite freeze, and more importantly he doesn’t pull away even though he goes very still, and his hand holds the quill very firmly, and his breath stops and starts, a sigh that’s near-inaudible, and then he very slowly untenses just a little and leans closer, the tiniest bit.

Sirius feels like jumping up and running around and yelling in something like victory, and also something like fear, still, of all this.

He swallows.

“What did you need help with?”

Remus makes a small, confused noise, then huffs, and reaches for some scrolls to drag closer and point at, comparing to his chart, hands moving quickly in gesturing.

“Look, there, if that’s… but then that would also, and then it doesn’t make sense?”

It really doesn’t, for what that’s worth with Sirius being as distracted as he is, but he takes a deep breath and focuses on the words and numbers, and starts to un-confuse what he’s seeing.

-

“Can I walk you home?”, Sirius asks, heart only mostly in his throat, after the next day’s meeting at which notes are compared, and Remus goes a little wide-eyed and tightens his grip on the cardboard box he’s holding.

Technically, as far as Sirius has been able to follow, the box is supposed to go to McGonagall, but Dorcas has it for now, and she had Remus hold it a minute ago but seems to have gotten distracted from whatever she needed her hands free for by having a debate with one of the Prewetts while the other one laughs at his brother.

Either way, Remus has the box, and he doesn’t drop it but he seems like he’s afraid he might, and he swallows and then swallows again, and Dorcas plucks the box from his hands, and then finally Remus shrugs.

“If you want to.”

He’s smiling, with only one corner of his mouth, in a way that’s confused and amused and nearly shy and Sirius is entirely, ridiculously bowled over by it.

“Of course I want to, I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

And this, then, is doing the work to defy the universe, this then is putting in just a little bit of effort and getting back the closeness he had missed so much, and here specifically it’s something that is new, that would not have been possible in the same way at Hogwarts, and that’s good, it is. It really, actually is, to find and feed every new kind of intimacy he can find, and to get smiles in return, not just for having the smiles but for knowing that they mean Remus is happy.

“Lead the way, then,” says Remus, and Sirius does, leads them outside and stops for one step to end up next to Remus again, and they walk.

It’s fraught with something even as it’s nearly as comfortable as things used to be, and Sirius is jittery and unsure again even as he’s at home here still, next to Remus, and it’s not yet a precipice; they’re on the brink of something but not close enough to go diving off yet, and Sirius still hasn’t decided if he wants to go diving off at all.

It could be enough to just make this friendship as it should be, he thinks, in the same thought as there is longing that is still wordless in its intensity.

He shakes his head, and postpones the thinking, and walks next to Remus.

And they fall into conversation easily, the kind that Sirius won’t remember later because the content isn’t new nor exciting, old back and forth, easy questions and unexciting answers, comfortable, and they walk, and it starts raining.

Neither of them has an umbrella and Muggle London doesn’t allow any useful charms, and they walk faster and it starts pouring and they start running, laughing, water everywhere, and Sirius doesn’t reach for Remus’ hand, but he wants to, and he’s getting more and more sure that Remus would want him to.

There isn’t time or space to think, while rain is running down his face and into his collar, into his shoes also, splashing everywhere, but Sirius is almost glad for it, mostly glad for it, because he can’t make that decision yet, doesn’t know how to say any of the unsayable new words yet.

He could, but. But.

-

For maybe the first time in his life, Sirius thinks there could be a case to be made that he should settle in something that is good enough instead of needing to have more, everything, brighter louder closer, but he also knows that he’s lying to himself because he can’t do that, and he knows that it would be good, but he’s not thinking about it yet, he isn’t.

There are other things to think about, anyway, and things to do.

Order things, always, still, forever, until they die presumably, which may be sooner than any of them would like, but that’s how it is and Sirius will make the best of it.

At the next big meeting, when Sirius arrives, James and Lily and Peter and Remus are all already there, James and Remus already sitting down, and Sirius fights his way through, past the back of Caradoc’s chair which is balanced dangerously on two legs, past Peter digging through his pockets for who knows what, and sits down next to Remus.

Next to, as in across the corner from, as has been the case before, and Sirius slouches down in his chair with a great effort (when will his upbringing and his posture leave him, he wonders) and shoves his legs underneath Remus’ chair as if coincidental, nudges his ankle against Remus’, leaves it there. Feels warmth, feels how idiotically bony Remus is.

It’s comfortable.

James, on Remus’ other side, clears his throat importantly, and Sirius grins at him.

“Got any big news?” He means about the war, he thinks, and in the split second before James opens his mouth, Sirius remembers that something was off when they talked through the mirrors earlier that day, and starts to wonder, and starts to think of terrible things, and starts to make plans and consider strategies, and then James does open his mouth.

“Lily and I are going to get married,” he says, in one word almost, like it’s been waiting in his mouth all day, and Sirius sits up straight.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to propose,” he says, hears himself sound more hurt than he meant to, about as hurt as he is.

Yes, yes, he was aware of drifting apart, yes, he has been distracted by Remus, but not having known…

James grins stupidly.

“I wasn’t and I didn’t. We were trying to fix the toaster and she told me she thought we should get married, so we’re getting married.”

And just like that the world rights itself. James Potter is still an idiot, and he has still never kept a secret from Sirius, and Sirius is so fond of him he could yell, and he does yell a bit, laughs at James and punches his arm and congratulates him incoherently.

“You’re getting _married_,” he says, and James laughs too.

“I’m getting married!” Louder, and half the people in the room turn towards him and then come in like a tidal wave of congratulations, and somewhere Lily stands on her toes to look over Marlene.

“I thought we were going to wait until later!”, she calls, and James shrugs helplessly, and she laughs and, _I love you_, she mouths, and James returns it, and she smiles widely and lets Marlene pull her back into conversation.

Remus congratulates James too, quieter, looking at his hands, and James elbows him and thanks him and gets pulled away by more obtrusive congratulations.

And Sirius is left with Remus, who isn’t looking at him either.

“James and Lily are getting _married_,” Sirius repeats, disbelieving.

Remus looks up.

“That they are,” he says, still not loudly and not anything.

“Are you not—”, Sirius starts, and stops himself, and restarts. “You don’t seem—”

“I’m not.”

Sirius doesn’t know what it is that Remus isn’t, but there’s something heavy in the pit of his stomach, and he doesn’t know what’s happening, and he thinks maybe the only thing that could lessen the way he feels about Remus is if Remus can’t be happy for… but surely…

“They’re going to get married,” he says, “Look at them, they’re so fucking happy, they’ve come so far, remember when—”

“I am looking at them,” says Remus, clearly, sharply, “I am. They are. I know. But I’m tired and scared, because we’re at war and I don’t know that we have any chance of winning, and because even if we weren’t at war I would have maybe half a future, and it just… I just.”

“Oh,” Sirius says, like it’s a word.

It’s too big a thing for it to be told to him in a room full of people who are all talking over each other and half-celebrating, it’s too big a thing, and Sirius has never doubted that they’ll win, they may not all get through unscathed but they will win, and he doesn’t understand, but he can see that Remus means it, that he believes it, and all he wants is to do something to fix it.

He doesn’t know how — he can’t fix it right this second, and maybe he can’t ever, and this one won’t be fixed by learning to turn into a dog — but he will do something, he has to do something.

He’s been taking his own happiness where he can, and he will go to war against the universe itself to wrangle happiness for Remus from it if he has to, at any cost, at every cost. It’s not something he can say, not something he knows how to say, and Remus has turned away again already, but there it is.

They will survive, and if Sirius has any say in it, Remus will be happy.

-

After the meeting has been called to order and then to an end, everyone falls into loud easy celebratory conversation again, if slightly more subdued, and Remus goes to talk to Moody about something, and Sirius finally gets to talk to Lily.

She’s up from her chair already but got held up by Emmeline and is standing by the table still after Emmeline has left, and Sirius comes over to her.

“So,” he says, grinning, and she laughs.

“So,” she repeats, “someone’s changed their mind quite a lot since fifth year, huh?”

They grin at each other for a moment.

“How’d that happen, then?”

“You were there for most of it.”

“Not the changing your mind in general. The getting engaged part, though if you want to take your future husband as an example and recount Hogwarts stories…”

“No, god no,” Lily says, and looks at James, on the other side of the room, with a little smile, and, “Well. Alright. I didn’t mean to, really. But we were fixing the toaster—”

Sirius rolls his eyes.

“James got that far.”

She rolls her eyes back at him.

“We were fixing the toaster, and we were making a right mess of it, obviously, because I’m much more of a, a frog guts and Charms theory gal than, oh here’s some wires and they’re smoking ominously, you know what I mean, and James is… well, he’s James. He’s the opposite of stupid, but he also doesn’t un-explode things.”

And Sirius snorts with laughter before he’s even fully processed all of that.

“It’s true, he never saw much reason to practice un-exploding things.”

Lily smiles broader.

“I know. So, the toaster is never going to recover, I don’t think, but as we were trying, and doing a very bad job of it, it just… it occurred to me that I wanted to stay with him for as long as we could manage even if we can’t fix a toaster between us, and also, I really truly know what I’m getting into. I’m not ever going to know more than now what an idiot he is and frankly what an idiot I am, and of course we won’t ever amalgamate into some perfect creature that can do everything perfectly, so… why not, and why not now.”

“And then you asked him to marry you.”

“No,” Lily says, and jabs a pointer finger, grins. “I informed him that we should get married. There’s a difference.”

Sirius, too, grins.

He is deliriously happy for them, he realizes, infinitely and without doubts, just happy for them, and he gets it, too.

Why not now, indeed, he thinks, to himself. They are at war and they are young and they know each other, their little group, better than they ever will know anyone else, there is no better time to be close and closer, to decide to hold onto what they want.

And why not also, he thinks, why not, if he may die if they may die if Remus may die if James… if Lily… if Peter. If Remus… if. And it’s a far less nebulous if than it used to be, they used to be immortal, used to be invincible, but if the last months have taught Sirius anything, and they have, it is that at some point they may turn out to not be immortal nor invincible, and Remus has been taught far worse by the world, so why not. If this is how it is, then why not.

He wants, with all of his stupid confused heart, to be happy and to make Remus happy, and he has never been particularly good at denying himself what he wants, nor is the war making him more inclined to do so; fuck it, he thinks, of course he should, of course he should, and now.

It doesn’t, it won’t, it will not feel like a hopeful stupid shot in the dark, because it feels like an educated guess — make himself happy and Remus too, let them both have this thing they want; it’s still a little unfathomable to make that offer, because Sirius isn’t sure what he’s offering (yes, still, yes, he still doesn’t know), but… he wants to offer, and if he can give Remus this, then he will.

Remus is gone already when Sirius tries to look for him, look at him, and it’s likely that it’s because he’s been sent out on a mission, but it’s the full moon in two days; he’ll be back soon, and Sirius will see him, and then… and then.

-

Remus doesn’t return before the full moon, and Sirius nearly goes to Dumbledore about it but knows Dumbledore won’t give him answers, and so he paces and waits and prepares for a mission of his own.

And then Remus knocks at his door at five in the morning.

It’s bad timing all around, because Sirius has to leave again half an hour after Remus returns and returns to Sirius’ flat, and it’s terrible in just about every way it could be, Remus arrives and Sirius is frenzied and Remus is collapsing onto the sofa, bruised and bleeding and twitchy, apologizing for not going to his own flat, convoluted half pain-hissed explanation of why.

Sirius, looking at him, wants to confess everything even though he doesn’t know the words to say it, there’s a difference between knowing the words for something and knowing the words to tell someone about it, and furthermore he wants to kiss Remus, and possibly he wants to kiss the injuries better, the scrapes on Remus’ knuckles, but _that_’s a thought he feels too unbalanced by so he won’t dwell on it while he has no time for dwelling of any kind.

“You’re welcome to the sofa even if you bleed on it,” he says instead of anything else he could say, “just if you bleed on it, you’re cleaning it, because I don’t think I know how.”

Remus, already on the sofa, already probably bleeding on it, closes his eyes and sighs instead of raising his eyebrows as he usually would.

“I refuse to believe that you have never inflicted something on this sofa or indeed many a piece of furniture that had to be cleaned afterwards.”

Sirius, to his horror, stutters.

He doesn’t know entirely why, and it’s all too much, Remus in his flat and the war in his flat and Remus bleeding, and he has to go soon, and he walks towards the sofa and crouches down, falls to his knees.

“Let me look at…?”

Remus huffs, opens his eyes a little, closes them again.

“Not as bad as it looks, I can deal with it myself.”

Soon, soon, as soon as he’s back from his own mission, Sirius will figure out the words and say them, but for now he reaches out to touch Remus’ wrist, to touch his temple where blood is in his hair, to, he doesn’t know, to feel Remus lean into his touch, and he does.

“I have to leave soon,” Sirius says, and he can hear the reluctance in his own voice, “Order stuff.”

Remus nods.

Sirius takes his hand back, stands up.

“I’ll be back soon, I think.”

Remus opens his eyes, looks at him, looks like he never wants to stop looking at Sirius, and smiles tiredly.

“I have to leave again soon, too.”

No, Sirius wants to say.

He knows war is waiting and more waiting, but he had hoped the waiting would align such that he wouldn’t have to wait for this, and he doesn’t want Remus to go again, he doesn’t want him to go wherever he got those injuries, he doesn’t want him to do things that have him gone during the full moon, he doesn’t want any of this.

“Where are you—” He stops himself. He knows they can’t ask that question. The same question as always, then: “Do you know when you’ll be back?”

The same answer as always: a shrug, apologetic.

“Fuck,” Sirius says, with feeling, to himself, and then he makes a decision and he looks at Remus and, “Come here when you get back?”

Remus frowns.

“I—”

“Please.”

Remus stops looking frowny in favour of looking wide-eyed and… something.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

“And promise to come back,” Sirius says, on an impulse the war has only just started beating into him, and then he turns around and picks up the letter about his mission and puts it in his pocket, and walks out into the hallway before he does something tremendously stupid and wonderful that he means to do when Remus is back, and opens and closes the front door and leaves Remus there, to leave him in his absence.

-

Remus returns a week later, weary-looking, drooping, with a bag much smaller than the time he was away, mud on his shoes and mud on his trousers and mud splattered everywhere else, and he doesn’t even open the door properly, just pushes through it with his elbows folded inelegantly, and leans back against it.

For some reason, for the very good reason of oh-fuck-is-this-when-it-should— is-this-really—, Sirius waits where he is, stands at the other end of the hallway, one foot in the kitchen and one out of it, and waits, very still, and watches Remus, who has his eyes closed and doesn’t even know Sirius is there, maybe.

Sirius wants to continue that thought as, doesn’t know what Sirius is about to do, but he hopes, actually, that Remus does, that he has seen in Sirius’ eyes what Sirius has found reflected in Remus’, hopes that this will only be half a surprise, that it will feel like the good kind of falling-into, long-awaited, for both of them.

He shuffles his feet, and Remus opens his eyes, looks at Sirius and smiles weakly for half a second. Drops his bag, drops his head against the door again to breathe for a while, then bends down to pick unsteadily at his shoelaces, and Sirius is still just standing there.

“It was a disaster,” Remus says, “It was a fucking disaster, I’m so glad to be back. Sorry for getting mud on your floor, and for not being able to tell you about some grand adventure in exchange for you not throwing me out, there was no grand adventure, just mud. Please don’t throw me out. Do you have any food that’s not gone bad? I’m only using you for your kitchen, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I want to kiss you,” Sirius tells him.

Remus trips, half-unbalances, catches himself against the wall, and makes a noise that Sirius can’t interpret.

“I— what?” And then he shakes his head rapidly, holds up a hand. “No, don’t, let me take off my shoes and then you can repeat yourself.”

It takes an immense amount of willpower to not bounce nervously while Remus fights the shoelaces and possibly a blush and definitely shaking hands, but Sirius manages, just barely.

The shoes are taken off and shoved aside, tracking more mud, and Remus pads on soggy sock feet into the kitchen, through the doorway Sirius is standing in, very close, without looking at Sirius, out of Sirius’ field of vision, and, by the sound of it, puts on the kettle, and doesn’t say anything at first.

“Sirius?”, he says, after a minute in which Sirius’ heart learns how to do some things it hasn’t done before, and Sirius follows him into the kitchen proper instead of hovering in doorways again, and waits for Remus to say more.

“Sirius,” Remus says again, leaning back against the cupboards, gripping the counter edge tightly, not quite meeting Sirius’ eyes, “I need you to repeat what you said, because I’m pretty sure I misheard.”

Sirius wants to laugh.

“I want to kiss you,” he says again, and he’s looking Remus in the eyes when he says it, and Remus looks terrified and elated and tiredly dumbstruck.

“You… since when.”

“That’s the best you could come up with?”

“Sirius.”

“Since ages ago, I don’t know, I didn’t realize that’s what it was, it’s stupid, it’s all stupid and I don’t like it, please tell me if you want me to kiss you or not.”

“I… Sirius.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, god, I… you want to kiss me.”

“If that’s what you want.”

Remus laughs, soft, exhausted, delighted.

“You couldn’t have done this when I’m awake? But yes, Sirius. I… yes.”

“Yes?”, Sirius repeats, like an idiot, and then he doesn’t know what to do, which he should have anticipated, maybe, but also there’s no precedent for this kind of not knowing, with him; he never doesn’t know, he never doesn’t know what to do, only now he’s got permission to kiss Remus Lupin, and he has no idea what to do with that.

Kiss Remus, presumably.

Which technically, mechanics-wise, isn’t a difficult thing to grasp, but emotionally it’s absolutely impossible, to bridge that distance, to break that wall, to make something manifest that has lived in Sirius’ head and refused to be so much as nameable for years, that is both too old and too new a thought.

Remus is shifting from one foot to the other, and is definitely blushing now, and seems about to take a step towards Sirius, but he doesn’t, and then Sirius tries to make himself move but he doesn’t know where to start, which corner of the fabric of the universe to grab at and peel it back to make this happen, and Remus is still twitching nervously, and it’s all kinds of awkward, and Sirius wonders if James and Lily ever felt this ridiculous, and then he wonders if Remus will still want to kiss him if he doesn’t get a move on soon, and—

And then the kettle whistles and saves them both.

Remus laughs, breathy, nervous, nervous, and Sirius feels nervous too he thinks, a little, and they both move towards the kettle and bump into each other.

“Fuck, sorry, I—”

“No, I’m sorry, here—”

In an ideal world or a film or something, they would trip and fall into each other’s arms now, but what happens in this reality is that they run into each other and step on each other’s feet and are suddenly uncomfortably close, which is absurd, they’ve never been uncomfortable with closeness, even under the Invisibility Cloak or behind tapestries or under desks or in cupboards, elbows in each other’s guts, James and Peter breathing into their faces in addition, they were never uncomfortably close, except someone mentioned kissing, some fool, name not disclosed, mentioned kissing, and now they’re very close and Remus is going pink in the face and Sirius feels like he may too, if he doesn’t do anything.

“Oops,” he says, and then he puts his hand on Remus’ forearm and leans in and kisses Remus on the mouth.

Remus kisses back.

It’s not everything, it’s not bells ringing birds singing, but it’s a lot, and it’s what Sirius has wanted for what feels now like forever, and Remus smiles into their second, third, fourth kiss.

It’s not an end to anything, not the end to confusion or to nerves or to arguing most likely, not an end to this and everything else being more frightening than Sirius wants it to be, but what it is is a start. What it is is a start, what it is is the second coming of that inevitable-feeling opening final moment when the train doors closed and Sirius knew what he wanted, what it is is every path suddenly open.

And maybe it’s a bad idea in a way that goes beyond how all the best ideas are bad, to do this when he barely knows how to name it still, to start what will surely be a long confusing process, a long winding journey through all the ways they do and don’t fit together, do and don’t have the same idea of what this should be; to only just start when things may go to shit soon, but still: if not now, when? This is as good a time as any to start, better now than later, he wants to take as much of this as he can in the time he has, and he feels much better about the beginning of this journey than he has felt about any beginning journey in way too long.

This is a good beginning, and, to be perfectly honest, he doesn’t care if it goes to shit from here. He doesn’t think it will, he can’t imagine that it will or how it would, not in any way other than the familiar and fixable, but even if it does…

This is a good beginning, and a good thing to begin.


End file.
